Dish Network (NASDAQ:DISH) may be the vendor of last resort—or at least in a very small pool of such vendors—for ruralites who want basic cable. But investors aren’t at all happy with the stock. It fell over 6% in today’s trading, thanks to a series of catastrophes that hit Dish Network all through Tuesday.
Catastrophe number one hit when Bank of America reconsidered its stance on Dish Network stock. Analyst David Barden sent Dish packing all the way into the basement, lowering it from Buy to Sell. Barden noted that a decade’s worth of planning for Dish Network resulted in not much of anything actually happening. Throw in “…a prolonged period of expected and unexpected technological challenges,” and that didn’t help it any. Carriage battles and routine price hikes, along with a growing move toward cable-cutting, won’t serve as positive growth vectors either.
Speaking of not helping, along came catastrophe number two: a cybersecurity breach. Dish Network customers were hit by a “network outage” a while back that hit not only internal communications but also some customer-facing systems. Dish revealed that the “network outage” was actually a straight-on cybersecurity breach. Worse, Dish also revealed that the breach allowed “certain data” to be “extracted,” in a disturbing twist.
The blows hurt Dish, and analysts aren’t happy either. Current analyst consensus calls Dish Network stock a Hold. However, with an average price target of $18.38 per share, it has 60.88% upside potential.
